Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Not Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals II

At the
end of my last column, “Not
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals,”
in which I distinguish between Saul Alinsky’s manual
for “community organizing” against selected local targets in the economic and
cultural realms, and Takuan’s
“Laws” for “governing” the national“community” once the “radicals” have entrenched themselves in political
power and have become the authoritarian establishment, I noted:

Seiyo’s laws are presented as
abstractions [initially]. I have no argument with them except for their
unfamiliar nomenclature. It has been my philosophy of political and cultural
commentary to prefer the concrete over the abstract. All abstract hypotheses
are founded on concretes, arguing from the particulars to the general. I think
that is the best way to communicate the power of ideas. If there are no
concretes or particulars to instance, then no matter how broad the abstraction,
there is no idea to communicate, and no abstraction to contemplate or reach.
Seiyo provides concretes in Part I as an overture to Part II.

In Part
II of his disquisition, Takuan Seiyo applies his abstractions and offers
numerous instances or concrete examples of Lawrence Auster’s and Takuan’s
“Laws” in action.

In my
original “Not Alinsky’s” column, I discussed the four abstractions Takuan Seiyo
lists under the heading “The
Laws of Postmodern Social Reality,” which read:

Presentism is the
first blindfold. All past attitudes and deeds relative to any minority are
judged by present standards.

Relativism is the
second blindfold. All judgments relative to past or current attitudes and deeds
toward any minority are applied to White society alone.

Outlyism is the
third blindfold. Any negative statistical fact relative to the mean or majority
characteristics of any designated minority is shouted down by quoting the
far-outlying exceptions to that statistical fact.

Sentimentalism is the
fourth blindfold. All negative hard or statistical facts relative to any
minority group are shouted down in preference to cuddly feelings about that
group or implanted feelings of guilt relative to it.

2. The
main goal of Liberal Society is to implement a radical equality that is
unnatural and in defiance of salient biological facts and unchanging human
reality. This can only be accomplished by coercion of the majority and
squashing of once-common civil liberties. This, in turn, requires an enormous
growth of the Liberal-Oppressive State, with its joined canopy of social
repressions and engineered culture implemented by all societal institutions at
levels as extreme, if not as violent, as they were under the Nazi Gleichschaltung.

3.
Liberal Society inexorably fractures and breaks down due to its promotion of
designated identitarian minorities and cultivation of the radically egalitarian
fictions related thereto.

4. The
ruling elite can keep Liberal Society together only by employing egregious
means bordering on fascism.

The
term identitarian is another of
Seiyo’s neologisms I’m uncomfortable with, but for the nonce, I'll accept it as
meaning a collectivist term that applies to a group-oriented ideology that
permits an individual to assert something like, “I’m a Muslim first, American
second,” or, “I’m a Muslim first, and British second.” Or, “I’m a
Muslim-American” or “I’m a German Muslim of Turkishpersuasion.” This mindset could easily be dubbed
“Hyphenism,” the hyphen signalling that a person’s firstloyalty is to his group or tribe, not to the
country of his residence and in contrast to his citizenship.

The
mainstream media naturally adopts the mindset, as well, as when one can see headlines
such as, “Somali-American students go on a rampage in
a high school cafeteria.” Identifying the Somalis as Muslims is verboten. (This incident in Minnesota involved a fight
between black Americans and Somali-Americans.) Or, “Most Irish-Americans don’t
get drunk on St. Patrick’s Day.” The hyphenization of groups and individuals
has been ongoing for decades. I would be startled to hear an American Jew
confess that he was “Jewish-American.” I have cocked a snook at the trend and refuse
to refer to myself as an “Atheist-American.”

Some
hyphenization is legitimate, as in a hypothetical story headlined, “Poll: 96%
of Mexican-Americans say they won't vote Democratic in 2016 because of Obama’s
amnesty plans,” or, “Most Cuban-Americans give thumbs down to Obama’s Cuba
overtures.”

That
being said, Seiyo prefaces his four points with:

Prior to analyzing the fallout from the recent “extremist
events” that we discussed in Part 1, it’s useful to take a look at the Laws of
Social Reality that govern these phenomena.

“The worse any designated minority or alien group behaves in a
liberal society, the bigger become the lies of Political Correctness in
covering up for that group. The more egregiously any non-Western or non-white
group behaves, the more evil whites are made to appear for noticing and
drawing rational conclusions about that group’s bad behavior.”

Auster elaborated further: “The First Law and its corollary are
intrinsic to liberalism. Once the equality of all human groups is accepted as a
given, any facts that make a minority or foreign group seem worse than the
majority native group must be either covered up or blamed on the majority.”

Since the 1960s, this law has been immutable in all the lands of
the Euro peoples, and was lavishly on display after the recent “extremist”
unpleasantness in majority-white countries. But it alone cannot convey the
manifold ways in which the West’s liberal rulers’ partly psychotic, partly
conniving obsession with designated minorities, Muslim or not, affects our
world’s present state and future destiny. In homage to the prematurely-departed
Larry Auster, l shall formulate here the laws subsidiary to his and bracketing
this phenomenon.

Throughout
Takuan’s essay he makes repeated references to Caucasians (or “whites”)
laboring under the rule of the Liberal establishment. Lest anyone conclude that
he is arguing from a racist position, it should be noted that it is the Liberal
establishment that instigated the race issue, and long before its fortuitous
alliance with Islam. For example, a front group of the Muslim Brotherhood, the
International Institute for Islamic Thought, coined the term “Islamophobia.”
It is consistently employed by especially the infidel MSM as a derogative term
for critics of Islam – be they serious critics of Islam or someone who
expresses his contempt for Islam by smearing the door of a mosque with pig’s
blood. A fear of Islam, they imply, is the same as racism. In non-Islamic issues, Liberals
contend or agree with black racists that “whites” owe blacks reparations for
past slavery.

But
not, they neglect to say, Saudi Arabia, or any other surviving feudal Muslim
regime; omitting the fact that Muslims enslaved blacks, millions of them, for
centuries before any country in the West practiced slavery. “White” or
“Western” civilization, they natter on, is a form of racial imperialism imposed on all
“people of color.”

But
most Muslims happen to be people of one color or another, including a growing
number of whites searching for a religion that will tell them what to do and
why they should live and for an iconic ghost that punishes thought. Their “diversity”
and multicultural education have left them empty of self and brain dead. So,
Islam is not a race. Islam can make no claim to any achievement that parallels
any of the West’s. Islam has never sent probes to other planets, has not
invented disease-eradicating vaccines or open-heart surgery, never figured out
pressure loads for 100-story skyscrapers, never discovered the oil beneath the
sands of the Mideast wastes otherwise watered by the blood shed over the
centuries by all the warring nomadic tribes in thrall to one form of Islam or
another. Any positive achievement of the West’s is rooted in a recognition of
and an adherence to the efficacy of reason and a fealty to reality, reached first
during the Renaissance and then during the Enlightenment after centuries of the
West wallowing in the same brand of anti-reason mysticism to which Islam has
grasped tenaciously for fourteen centuries and will never let go of lest Islam
perish in historic irrelevancy, leaving behind only a steady, unbroken record
of nihilism.

Islam and
reason are in essence antithetical. No “reformation” of Islam is possible without
gutting it of its violent, anti-man nature.

Following
are some of Seiyo’s numerous instances of craven Western timidity regarding Islam
and a bullheaded, fact-denying refusal to name Islam as the cause of the “violent
extremism” of Muslims:

NBC Television analyst Evan
Kohlmann opined that France’s Problem is “The Far-Right,” not the Jihadists,
let alone the 10 million African Muslims.

Great Britain’s Telegraph
featured a headline on the Charlie Hebdo massacre that read “France faces
rising tide of Islamophobia”

BBC News ran a program about
the growing anti-Semitism in France, showing footage of a neo-Nazi march a year
earlier, but nothing of the Muslim purveyors of 99% of the anti-Semitism.

The New York Daily News
pixilated the Muhammad cartoon in its story about the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Fox News issued an abject
apology for “regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in
Europe,” citing “no credible information to support the assertion” concerning
the existence of “so-called ‘No Go Zones’ areas where non-Muslims allegedly
aren’t allowed in and police supposedly won’t go.” Bloomberg Business Week
published “Debunking the Myth of Muslim-Only Zones in Major European Cities.”

What about
ISIS? Al-Qaeda? The Taliban? Hezbollah? Boko Haram? These and other terrorist organizations,
goes the Liberal line, have little or nothing to do with Islam. Their members
are merely “violent extremists” (aka “militants”) who have “misread”
the Koran. To wit, President
Barack Obama on the brutal murder of the Jordanian
pilot by ISIS. In the video of his remarks, Obama looks and speaks about
the Jordanian pilot as though he just had a bad day at the golf course. He may
as well have been reciting the rules of the course clubhouse.

“Lieutenant al-Kasasbeh’s
dedication, courage, and service to his country and family represent universal
human values that stand in opposition to the cowardice and depravity of ISIL,
which has been so broadly rejected around the globe. As we grieve
together, we must stand united, respectful of his sacrifice to defeat this
scourge. Today, the coalition fights for everyone who has suffered from
ISIL’s inhumanity. It is their memory that invests us and our coalition
partners with the undeterred resolve to
see ISIL and its hateful ideology
banished to the recesses of history.” [Italics mine]

And the
name of that “hateful ideology,” Mr. President? Islam. But Obama refuses to utter
the word. He doesn’t want to be identified as an “Islamophobe.” If anything, he
is an Islamophile. His administration is riddled with Muslims and Islamophiles,
ideological termites eating away at our country’s national security. With his
blessing.

And, a
few more of Seiyo’s instances of genuine “Islamophobia,” that is, examples of fearing
the consequences of bad-mouthing Islam so instead it’s better to state that Islam
is a paragon of tolerance and good will:

The
Swells Who Ride in Limousines (SWORILs) turned out en masse for a
photo-op in Paris, with millions of Useful Idiots throughout the West declaring
to TV cameras “Je suis Charlie Hebdo,” but not a single one declaring “Je suis
Charlie Martel.” German Useful Idiots went as far as carrying signs that read,
“I am Charlie Hebdo — but not PEGIDA.”

German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck attended in Berlin a
Muslim-organized event “to promote tolerance and religious freedom and “to show
solidarity with the victims.” The victims, alas, could no longer benefit from
the solidarity.

Herr
Gauck said to the crowd; “We are all Germany” and disclosed with astonishing
originality that “Germany has become more diverse through immigration —
religiously, culturally and mentally.” His assertion that this diversity has
made Germany more successful, interesting and likeable was based on far more
flimsy evidence.

Frau
Merkel asserted that Islam was part of Germany and that there was no place for
“hatred, racism and extremism” in the country. Of course not; that’s why an
estimated 550 “Germans” are out of the country, exercising their hatred, racism
and extremism with ISIS, with so many more trying to join that the German
government is replacing their regular ID documents with “jihadi cards,” to
prevent them from leaving the country.

Jihadists returning to Örebro Municipality will get
psychological help.
And not only that: Tvärsnytt now reveals that the municipality council are
discussing giving them jobs.

- It gives a very inverted signal, Peter Santesson, opinion Director at
Demoskop, says to the Swedish newspaper Expressen.

ISIS Jihadists returning to Örebro will be offered help by a psychologist, the
municipal leaders have decided. Jihadists are likely to have traumatic
experiences and this is where the municipality wants to help.

- We have discussed how we should work for these guys who have come back, and
to prevent them from returning to the fighting, and that they should be helped
to process the traumatic experiences they have been through, Councilor Rasmus
Persson (C), said to SVT "Tvärsnytt".

They also want to offer the jihadists jobs in the municipality. The initiative
is to prevent alienation, which the Örebro Politicians believe is the reason to
take part in the fighting in Iraq and Syria. (!)

Oh! We
mustn’t forget the “traumatic experiences” the return jihadists have been
through! The poor dears! However, we should
forget the traumatic experiences of native Swedish women who have been gang
raped by Muslims, or the experiences of the Jews of Malmo at the hands of
invading Muslim settlers whose religion calls for the extermination of Jews, and
other inconvenient but unmentionable experiences of Swedes, mentionable on pain
of being charged with “hate speech” and “racism.”

Paul
Weston takes British Home Secretary Theresa May to task for her pro-Islam,
pro-Muslim speech delivered at a Party conference last month, in his column, “The
Multicultural Madness of Theresa May.”

When we willfully refuse to
believe basic facts, such as the incompatibility of Islam and non-Islam, we
retreat into fantasy or outright lies in order to deny the bleeding obvious.
Highly educated men and women with PHD’s and Master’s degrees thus find
themselves talking utter nonsense when it comes to Islam, simply because of
their Politically Correct refusal to accept the awful, ghastly reality of Islam’s
rigid belief system.

The pathologically irrational
behaviour of British Home Secretary Theresa May is just such an example of the
insanity that ensues when liberals pontificate upon Islam. She made a speech
recently at the Conservative Party Conference which was so riddled with
platitudes, contradictions, lies and fantasies that had it been submitted it as
an end of term paper, she would have been laughed out of a school for slow
learners let alone Oxford University from where she inexplicably graduated.

After quoting
several delusional but Islam-fawning portions of her speech, Weston asks:

Memo to TM: Are you utterly
insane? You cannot state we celebrate different ways of life and value
diversity whilst at the same time complaining about people because they lead
different lives in line with the “diverse” values of 7th century
Arabia. The whole point of diversity is “difference” sweetie-pie! This is as
foolish as stating you value the diversity entailed in living with peckish
lions and then complaining about their illiberally carnivorous behaviour when
they unsurprisingly eat you. You can celebrate British values or you can celebrate
Islamic values. You cannot, you simply cannot celebrate both! A
five year-old would understand this basic fact. Why cannot you?

I have to ask you, in all
seriousness Ms May, are you A) Suffering from a form of mental illness? B) Both
remarkably stupid and illogical? C) A coward? D) A traitor? E) A typical
careerist politician engaging in lies and deception in order to ensure the
inevitably violent racial/religious break-down occurs only after you have
retired somewhere safe with your gold plated pension?

And a final question, Home
Secretary May: When our politicians refuse to recognize reality, is it likely
that reality will just disappear, or will it remain to devour our children?

Memo to
Theresa May: You wish Islam to be what it isn't, just as convicted
classified document leaker Bradley
Manning wishes to be something he isn't: A doppelganger of you, albeit a
younger version, and in prison for the next thirty-five years.

I have
some helpful advice for Mr. Weston: What permits Theresa May to shamelessly
flaunt her lunacy as official policy is pragmatism, the philosophy that reason,
principles, integrity, and sanity needn’t guide one’s actions or policies, that
they’re optional, and what works is not subscribing to any one of those things,
but ensuring that Muslims don’t demonstrate loudly calling for her head and
that of Prime Minister David Cameron.

In conclusion,
it should go without saying that had the West not abandoned reason, none of
these things would ever have occurred. They would have been the subject of
wildly imaginative satire. But, as nature abhors a vacuum, and if reason is
absent from human relationships, only the irrational will fill the void left
behind by retreating reason.

We
would not be assaulted daily with so many absurdities, contradictions, and
abbreviations. And Lawrence Auster and Takuan Seiyo would never have had reason
to formulate their Laws and Rules for a Liberal Society.

2 comments:

Wow. You're reading Larry Auster. I discovered him in 2007 and he changed my view on a lot of things. Auster is a Traditionalist Conservative; a real reactionary right winger who is not pro-Classical Liberal. In fact his argument, which I think has validity, is that Classical Liberalism and the Enlightenment paved the way for Leftism largely due to its inherent epistemological subjectivism; which is something I think a few O'ist scholars think too.

Auster not only applied his "minority-majority" view to Muslims but to every non-white group. He was a racialist although not a white nationalist and not an anti-Semitic PaleoCon (he was born Jewish and converted to Christianity). IMO, Auster was the BEST analyst of the Left of any and every modern political commentator out there. No Objectivist even comes close to understanding Leftism like Auster did. Thing is, I think that many of Auster's identifications are consistent with Rand's philosophy. In essence he believed that skepticism led to relativism led to egalitarianism led to nihilism. Throw in the altruist ethics and you have Leftism as a replacement religion for Christianity but instead of sacrifice of the haves to the have-nots (downtrodden) you have sacrifice of the white to the non-white. Call it "hatred of the white for being the white."

But what Auster clued me in on was that today's Left is not just waging a war on the "producers" as O'ists would say. But on white producers and specifically white, male producers. Today's Left is specifically a war on white non-Leftist men.

I would disagree with you on one thing though. Islam is valuable to the Left precisely because it is a religion of non-whites for the most part. Most Muslims are either brown, olive, black or beige, not white. If Islam were a European religion it would serve no purpose to the Left. Remember Auster's principle; the Left surrenders to things non-Western or non-White. Leftists, especially Euro-Leftists, want non-white immigration because their particular egalitarian vision ends with a multi-racial humanity where there are no white people. This is documented. Its what the European Union was founded for. This is why Leftist don't care about something like Rohterham rape land. They will throw women under the bus because they don't care about opposing "rape culture". What they care about is destroying their mortal enemy which is the white male. To do that they need to import as many non-whites as possible. Thats why they defend Islam. Islam gives them the non-whites to fulfill their utopian visions.

MadMax: I’m afraid I’m going to have to take exception to some of your remarks in your comment. First of all, I’m not that big a fan of Auster, or even of Takuan Seiyo. There are some underlying principles they’ve articulated with which I agree, but not all. My chief objection to them is that they’ve written from a Christian “traditionalist” viewpoint. They’re like squeaky clean Republicans, and many lights in the Tea Party, and pundits who write for the Weekly Standard.

Second, as much as I don’t like many “officially recognized spokesmen for Objectivism,” such Ari Armstrong, Diana Hsieh and others in that crowd – I’ve had verbal run-ins with them in the past – Hsieh and I traded blows over the Ground Zero mosque, you might recall – but I don’t bear them grudges. I just don’t think of them anymore. In fact, I’ve forgotten what Armstrong did or said that rubbed my fur the wrong way. But to insinuate that she’s a Leftist of any stripe is a bit much. She’s an Objectivism follower, not an innovator. Until Peikoff spoke on the issue, she was vociferous in her condemnation of me and anyone else who opposed the GZ mosque, as he did. After that, she had nothing to say.

Moreover, neither Auster nor Takuan is entirely clear about his concern for “whites.” I’m just not that confident that they aren’t writing from a white “supremacist” standpoint, which is why I express my qualifications and reservations about their statements in both columns. I can only agree with them on an ad hoc-per issue basis. So, I must say that Auster’s and Seiyo’s “identifications” are definitely not consistent with Objectivism. When a living body like Western civilization decays, I’m more likely to accept Leonard Peikoff’s account of the decomposition, not Auster’s or Takuan’s.